


Neon

by AcidAngel21



Series: Winter Obi-Wan [5]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Brothers, Clone Rumor Mill, Escape, Gen, Unintentionally Frightening Skywalkers, Unreliable Narrator, Winter Soldier Obi-Wan Kenobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcidAngel21/pseuds/AcidAngel21
Summary: Leaving the 212th was not supposed to be a path to cowardice, existential dread, and Sith Eyes, but these kinds of things are always a lot more complicated than they look like they're going to be.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Original Clone Trooper Character(s)
Series: Winter Obi-Wan [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593982
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Neon

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the Winter Obi-Wan series and will make the most sense if you've read the main two stories. It's set after Back on the Road in Obfuscation.

Neon’s departure from the 212th had been made of a series of small, seemingly inconsequential or easy decisions that had added up into a tidal wave that had almost crushed him. Taking the chip out had resulted in a cataclysmic shift of everything Neon had thought was true about himself. To the point that he hadn’t been able to cope properly. He’d been so obvious. So transparent. Cody had taken him aside and gotten him out personally; Neon would be forever embarrassed and grateful.

Poy Sivron had been nothing like he’d expected for a Twi’leki freedom fighter. She had been crass, blunt, and picked more fights than even some of the worst of Neon’s brothers would when they were drunk. But the fights she’d picked had been with beings that were trying to jurkadi her operation, and in a weird sort of way, Neon _got_ her. She made sense. Whatever else was going on with her, whatever else she did, she had the same sort of ruthless, protective streak as a lot of the brothers Neon could only hope he’d measure up to one day. Owning a cantina on Llanic was probably part of why she did the things she did, but it all added up to make her incredibly intimidating if anyone asked him.

She’d loaded him on a ship with some of her people and a bunch of black market liquor headed for wherever they were supposed rendezvous with Rex.

That was the other thing. Neon had been amongst those of the 212th that had known _of_ Rex, but hadn’t _known_ Rex. That was a big distinction for vode. But there he was, trusting that this mysterious vod was worthy of the trust that the Commander and the Captain had in him. And that the people he was with were worthy of the same trust. They weren’t brothers, and that was tripping Neon up, even before he’d met them. Civilians, as a rule, were hit or miss.

They’d come out of hyperspace into a remote drop point that was far enough away that Neon didn’t even know where he was supposed to look to figure out where the closest thing to civilization was. The ship in front of them reminded him of some of ships the 212th had kept: not much to look at, but good for fooling an enemy into thinking that they couldn’t maneuver or fight as well as they actually could. So he kept his mouth shut through the docking process and waited at the door to cross over.

It had opened with a hiss and Neon had picked up his besbe and headed across the tiny bridge to the brother waiting across the way.

Rex was…different was the word, than what Neon had expected from a technical deserter. He had the same air of authority around him as Captain Stacks did, but it was like it was part of him instead of being around him. There was nothing obviously different about him on the surface, but Neon had heard the rumors. He’d heard Hail talking about what he’d seen on Christophsis. So as normal as he may have looked (hair aside) and acted, Neon wasn’t fooled.

Then there were the other _beings_ on the ship.

The aura of power around them was almost tangible. Neon had heard that they could hide, but it was obvious that they weren’t even trying to. He could feel them looking at him, like rancors, all of them like rancors. But he picked Ben out from them by feeling alone. Neon knew for a fact he was Force Null. But he also knew that he wasn’t imagining the ice that crawled up his spine around Ben. He knew that it was probably a fraction of how well Hibir could freeze someone. Ben may not have been Hibir anymore, but he still carried that sense of danger and power around him like a cloak of dry ice vapor that sent chills up Neon’s spine along the ice.

They really were _beings_ , and the more he followed Rex around, the more obvious it was that he was just like them in his own way. He felt safe, because he was a brother, and Cody and Stacks trusted him, and he’d come all the way out in the middle of nowhere to pick Neon up, and he’d let Neon into his space, into his things without even the slightest hesitation. But it was kind of like being around one of the ARCs (yes, Neon was aware that Rex, Cody, and a bunch of the others had been given ARC training during the Temple incident). They were safe, but part of the reason they were safe was because they were dangerous to everyone else.

The Abiik-Kemirs were just dangerous period; Neon could feel it.

Neon watched the caf maker work, the subtle tremors of a smaller ship in hyperspace going through his boots. Rex was reading something or other on a datapad, an eye on the door while Neon’s back was turned.

Frost on Neon’s breath and Silas was in the café.

“Hey, Rex. Have you seen that hydrospanner I was using the other day? The heat in Buir’s room is busted.”

It was so offhand and normal that the contrast to the danger made Neon feel like he was walking with one boot on or something.

“Is it in the shop room?” Rex was acting completely offhand and normal too.

It was almost _domestic_.

“I don’t think so; I just checked in there. Kark, where’d it go?”

Neon kept his eyes on the caf maker. He had no idea how to deal with that conversation, so the best thing to do was keep his mouth shut and his nose out of it. 

Right?

“Have you tried the training room?”

“No, you’re a genius; thanks!”

“Uh-huh.”

Silas left in an unnaturally quick rush of air and Neon wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or not.

Rex huffed a little and went back to his datapad. Maybe it hadn’t been. Jetiise just used their powers normally, Neon thought. Maybe. So, maybe that had just been him in a rush. Who knew? It wasn’t really that important, was it?

“Don’t overthink him. You’ll give yourself a headache,” Rex said absently, pecking at his datapad.

Neon nodded anyway and poured his caf into a mug that looked like handmade pottery. Either they were rich or thrifty. Or both. Looking at the ship they flew on didn’t really give Neon any clues about which one it was.

What was ‘don’t overthink him’ supposed to mean?

The chair at the table squeaked loud enough that Neon was convinced it was about to collapse under him when he sat on it and he heard Rex sigh.

“They won’t fix that either; don’t worry about it. It’s just noise.”

“Right, right. It always does that?” Neon took a sip of his caf.

“Every time.” Rex pecked at the datapad again.

“Ah.” Squeaky chairs and hydrospanners.

Ice up his spine and Ben came in. Rex paid almost no attention beyond an exchange of small nods and tossing Ben a spoon that was sitting on the edge of the table. Neon couldn’t help but track him as he made his way to the kettle. He was just so-so normal! And there was all that danger underneath all that normal just in the way the man walked and it was so weird and this entire thing was so weird and so beyond what Neon had been trained for, had been made for.

Ben moved to get something, and Neon’s mug was on the ground in a twitch/flail back that he hadn’t even known he was doing until the mug shattered on the brushed metal floor of the café.

For a second, everything was completely frozen in place: Ben reaching for something in a cabinet that was set into the wall, Rex reaching for the mug, Neon all the way back in his seat, not even daring to breath. Then someone hit play and Neon was hyperventilating watching Ben reach for a towel and hearing Rex say something or other about it being fine and to ‘breath, vod’ika; it’s going to be okay’.

“Sorry, sorry!” Neon made his escape into the hall and headed for where he thought he remembered Rex’s room being.

He heard footsteps behind him and checked to see Rex following behind him. His face was relatively impassive about the whole thing, but his eyes gave away how worried he was and Neon didn’t know how to feel about any of it!

Which way was kriffing up?!

“Come on, it’s this way.” Rex carefully maneuvered around Neon to lead the way to his room.

Neon followed silently, trying not to think about the fact that he was officially a hut’uun. Running away from a broken mug, even around Hib-Ben. 

Pathetic.

Rex’s room was dark and quiet, lightsaber on the tiny little desk that was less than a full step away from his bed. The blankets on the floor muffled the sound of the ship’s engines and the whole thing felt almost like a cocoon of dark colors and quilted looking blankets with darning scars on them. Rex still didn’t say anything as he settled in the nest of blankets on the floor. Neon sat, mostly because, what the fek else was he supposed to do?

The blanket under Neon’s hands was so soft it felt like petting a tooka without all the fur. It felt like luxury even with how threadbare it looked, but even with the discomfort of being around something like that, the soft feeling of the whole room, the velvety quality of the darkness was getting to Neon. It made his brain feel fuzzy, but a more comfortable kind of fuzzy than the kind that made his heart pound, that felt like drowning. He could hear Rex breathing next to him on the floor, the 4, 7, 8 count he was cycling through.

“What does it feel like?” As soon as the words were out of Neon’s mouth he wanted to take them back.

Rex, for whatever reason, didn’t react almost at all aside from to look at Neon for a quick second before looking back at the ceiling. Neon thought maybe he was going to ignore the question or spare him the embarrassment of having asked it in the first place by acting like it hadn’t happened.

“Do you remember what the flash trainers felt like?” Rex asked quietly.

Like everything was going too fast, like trying to shove one more thing in a bag that was already pulling apart at the seams.

“Yeah.”

“It feels like that sometimes, like the galaxy is in your head.”

There was something in Neon’s throat. He couldn’t tell if the soft darkness around them felt more like that cocoon or more like a brig. The idea of moving to figure it out made him feel like he couldn’t breath. Still, he could hear the same in, hold, out in his ear. He wondered if the room felt the way it did because that was how Rex felt, if that was something he wanted to know, if that was something Neon would be angry to know that he’d felt that too. A million things were going through his head too fast to catch and the gravitas of what Neon’d done was sitting in on his chest and making his stomach drop and his heart race.

How could something feel so unreal and so heavy at the same time?

There was something warm pressed against his arm, more warmth ghosting next to him and he heard Rex breathing right next to him still. Neon kept running his hand over the blanket under him until it didn’t feel real anymore. He tried to trace the near-invisible panels in the ceiling, kept restarting when he lost his place, tried to ignore the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. The room was so quiet it didn’t sound like a ship in hyperspace at all. Then again, there was only one other brother; Neon was still looking for the sounds of hundreds of brothers sleeping, talking, living around everyone else.

“Maybe it was easier. I don’t think anywhere’s been completely quiet since all of this started,” Rex said.

What did that mean? 

It didn’t really matter at that point, because Rex was getting up and Neon had another moment of completely ridiculous, childish, cowardly terror that the only vod around was going to leave him by himself and he couldn’t be by himself, he didn’t-couldn’t-

He was holding onto Rex’s arm hard enough that he was probably going to give him bruises, but Neon couldn’t make himself let go. And Rex stopped moving, sitting on his knees just in Neon’s line of sight.

“I’m not going anywhere, vod’ika; I promise. I’m right here, okay?” Rex wasn’t even trying to get Neon to let go, he just sat there, letting Neon grip his arm tight enough to hurt his own fingers.

Neon didn’t know how long it was before he could let go, but Rex stayed put, not moving besides working his arm a little bit after Neon managed to let him go. Neon’s cheeks were on fire and he felt like he could die of the shame. He curled around his knees and avoided looking at Rex, who was still sitting right where Neon had stopped him for some reason. He couldn’t make himself look up from the floor. He was a trooper, he’d graduated, fought, been alone with strangers on Llanic, on the ship over from Llanic, what the kriff was wrong with him?

“We’re not supposed to be alone. I didn’t, don’t know how the chip changes that, but we’re not made to be alone, more than other beings. We were engineered to be around our brothers all the time. I didn’t realize how much it hurt until Christophsis. Then it was like I just figured out that something had been cut out of me when I wasn’t looking. I dealt with it, or I thought I did, but going back just ripped open whatever was there. You don’t have to go anywhere until you figure out what you need. And I’m not going anywhere until that happens either.”

There was something under or in Rex’s voice that Neon couldn’t quite parse, but there were tears streaming down his face and he buried it in his knees, even more ashamed that he couldn’t stop just one thing. The fear of the beings he was around was still there, one brother was too quiet, that his head wasn’t even his own, that he hadn’t been able to tough it out and help his brothers like he was supposed to. He’d run away, and it wasn’t even like Rex, still sitting next to him. 

He’d had to leave because he wasn’t strong enough to get through the thing that literally everyone else had managed to get through; because he was weaker than all the others.

And now, he couldn’t even handle dealing with the people that had come to help him. He couldn’t deal with being in a room with someone who hadn’t done anything but try to give him his space and be as gentle as possible since he’d come on board. And that was a whole other layer of shame, that these beings could sense the fear that kept choking him and tricking him and freezing him in place. That Rex could do that too. Rex could do that too.

Neon looked over at Rex who was still sitting like nothing had changed, like it was all the same and Neon hadn’t acted like a cadet.

Who were these beings? Neon latched onto the question like the lifeline it had to be. He was in Pulsar, hadn’t been deployed on Christophsis even though he’d seen the aftermath, heard about it too. But he had been around for the Temple incident, even if he hadn’t done anything besides help keep the AT-TEs in working order. But he’d heard about what happened, heard about the orders that weren’t orders that they had to stay out of the hanger the Abiik-Kemirs’ ship was in and stay out of Captain Rex’s way when the word came through.

So, what were they all doing to Rex for there to be threads of darjetii gold in his eyes?

**Author's Note:**

> Jurkadi-Attack, threaten, mess with  
> Vode-Brothers/Siblings  
> Besbe-Kit (slang)  
> Buir-Parent/Mom  
> Jetiise-Plural of Jedi  
> Vod’ika-Little brother/sibling  
> Hut’uun-Coward  
> Darjetii-Sith


End file.
